The Gifted the Talented and Me Read online

  Praise for

  ‘The Gifted, the Talented and Me made me cry with laughter.

  A comic novel like this is a gift to the nation, and Will Sutcliffe’s story about teenage Sam, struggling to adapt as his family moves to privileged, pretentious Hampstead and enrols him in a progressive London school, is the best book he has written for a decade. He, David Nicholls and Joe Dunthorne are part of a tradition that goes back to P.G. Wodehouse, and which has never been more needed by readers young and old’

  Amanda Craig, journalist and author of The Lie of the Land

  ‘So, so funny and recognisable – I immediately forced it on my fourteen-year-old’

  Jenny Colgan, Sunday Times bestselling author

  ‘I totally loved The Gifted, the Talented and Me – great characters, packed with wisdom and reminiscent of Adrian Mole (there’s no higher praise, let’s face it)’ Sathnam Sanghera, journalist and author of The Boy with the Topknot and Marriage Material

  Also by William Sutcliffe

  FOR ADULTS

  New Boy

  Are You Experienced?

  The Love Hexagon

  Whatever Makes You Happy

  FOR ADULTS AND YOUNG ADULTS

  Bad Influence

  The Wall

  Concentr8

  We See Everything

  FOR YOUNGER READERS

  Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom

  Circus of Thieves on the Rampage

  Circus of Thieves and the Comeback Caper

  For Saul, Iris and Juno

  and for any teacher who has ever given up their time to put on a school play

  Contents

  Because we can

  Goodbye, Stevenage!

  Just Call Me Tony

  Confidence is just shyness doing a handstand

  The longest speech Ethan had made since he was twelve

  Illicit activity behind the bike sheds

  Straightforward!?

  How I got a girlfriend for thirty seconds

  My first (and probably last) pottery lesson

  How to cyberstalk your mother

  A social life that isn’t social. Or a life

  My hollow victory

  Fight! Fight! Fight!

  A new me, ideally not a eunuch

  A moment of brotherly genius

  The sulky angel and her confiscated phone

  Modern romance

  Picking insects out of Felipe’s hair

  Marshmallow palace flying high

  Me versus drool boy

  No such thing as a goody-one-shoe

  Felipe’s little black book in his head

  The … thing

  Ethan’s next big confession

  My high-risk Siberia dodge

  Leather Speedos

  The sexting fail rebound illusion

  Four terrifying words

  The splurged roadkill of my self-esteem

  The last thing you would ever want to ask your mother

  The meaning of sick

  A first in the history of snogging

  … and we didn’t even slightly care

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Because we can

  ‘COME DOWNSTAIRS, EVERYONE! FAMILY MEETING!’

  Even though I was mildly curious about why Dad was back from work so early, and what a ‘family meeting’ might involve, I stayed put in my room.

  ‘PIZZA!’ he added. ‘Last one down gets the Hawaiian!’

  Doors slammed, footsteps thundered down the staircase and I leaped up. After a brief tussle with Ethan in the kitchen doorway, during which Freya somehow managed to crawl between our legs and get the first slice, we all assembled around the table, eating straight from takeaway boxes spread over a layer of drawings, uncompleted homework, unopened letters and unread magazines.

  Ethan, who was seventeen and hadn’t worn any colour except black for the last three years, announced through a mouthful of pizza, ‘I don’t mind who gets custody, but I’m not moving out of my bedroom.’

  ‘Custody?’ said Mum.

  ‘Yeah. I’m not leaving, and I’m not going anywhere at the weekends.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, love,’ said Mum. ‘We’re not getting divorced.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ethan. ‘So what’s all this about a family meeting?’

  Freya, who lived in a seven-year-old’s fantasy universe populated exclusively by fairies, unicorns and cats, temporarily tuned in to reality and began to cry. ‘You’re getting divorced?’

  Mum jumped out of her chair, dashed around the table and lifted Freya into her arms. ‘We’re not getting divorced. You mustn’t worry.’

  ‘But Ethan said you are!’

  ‘Ethan’s wrong.’

  ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’ said Freya. ‘How do I know you’re not just saying that to protect me?’

  ‘Ethan!’ snapped Mum. ‘Look what you’ve done. Tell Freya you made it up.’

  ‘I didn’t make it up.’

  ‘You did! Nobody said anything about divorce until you piped up.’

  ‘I worked it out for myself.’

  ‘INCORRECTLY! WE’RE NOT GETTING A DIVORCE!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Ethan.

  ‘What?’ replied Mum. ‘You’re asking me why we’re not getting a divorce?’

  ‘If you can’t even think of an answer, maybe we should be worried,’ said Ethan.

  ‘STOP!’ said Dad. ‘Rewind. Stay calm. There’s no divorce. I called this meeting because we have something to tell you.’

  ‘Trial separation?’ said Ethan.

  ‘No. It’s good news.’

  This shut everyone up. The idea of good news hadn’t occurred to us.

  ‘I sold my company,’ said Dad, leaning back in his chair, with a grin spreading across his face.

  Ethan, Freya and I stared at him blankly.

  ‘You have a company?’ I said.

  ‘Yes! Of course I do! What do you think I’ve been doing every day for the last six years?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Well, until last week I had a company. But now I’ve sold it!’

  He beamed at us, waiting for a response. None of us had any idea what he was talking about, or why he was making such a performance of this fantastically dull information. Freya, losing interest in the entire conversation, pulled a notebook from her pocket and began to draw.

  ‘For a lot of money,’ he added.

  Ethan’s eyes rose from his pizza.

  ‘When you say a lot … are you saying … ?’

  ‘We’re rich!’ said Mum, leaping up with Freya still in her arms and beginning to dance around the kitchen. ‘We’re rich! We’re rich! Goodbye, Stevenage! Goodbye, cramped, boxy little house! It’s going to be a whole new life! Nobody believed he could do it, but he did! He made it! We’re rich!’

  ‘How rich?’ said Ethan.

  ‘Comfortable,’ said Dad.

  ‘Stinking,’ said Mum.

  ‘Not stinking,’ said Dad. ‘Mildly smelly.’

  ‘Can I have a new phone?’ said Ethan.

  The only clue this might have been about to happen was Dad’s job. Or lack of one. When Freya was still a baby, he walked out on whatever it was he was doing back then – something that involved wearing a tie and getting home after I was in bed – and installed himself in the shed at the bottom of our garden. He spent months on end squirrelling around down there, dressed like he’d just crawled out of a skip (which, in fact, he often had), and from this point on, when people asked him what he did for a living, he said he was an ‘entrepreneur’. If he was trying to sound interesting, he sometimes said ‘inventor’.

  He was always coming and going with random bits of machinery, then occasionally he’d turn up in the kitchen wearing a suit, and we’d all be kind of, ‘Whoa! Who are you? How did you get into the house?’ But after making fun of him for looking like an employable adult, none of us ever remembered to ask him where he was going.

  One of those meetings must have generated a source of serious money, because at some point he stopped tinkering in the shed, upgraded his wardrobe from skip-diver to blind-man-stumbling-out-of-a-jumble-sale and went off to work in a warehouse somewhere. Or maybe it was an office. I never thought of asking him. He was just my dad, going out to work like everyone else’s dad. What this actually involved didn’t seem important. As long as he showed up at breakfast and weekends, and drove me where I needed to go, it didn’t occur to me to wonder what he did all day.

  Then there was a week when he flew off to America, carrying brand-new luggage and a floppy suit bag I’d never seen before. This time I remembered to ask what he was up to, but he just said ‘meetings’. There was something in the way Mum wished him luck as he set off that did seem odd – the way she said it, like she genuinely meant it – but a couple of minutes later I forgot all about the whole thing.

  It was just after he got home from America that our first-ever family meeting was called.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, interrupting Mum’s celebration dance. ‘What do you mean goodbye, Stevenage?’

  ‘You don’t think we’re going to stay here, do you?’ said Mum. ‘Rich people don’t live in Stevenage. They live in London! Dad’s sold his company, I’ve handed in my notice at work, and we can finally get out of this dump and move to London!’

  ‘But I like Stevenage,’ I said.

  ‘The only people who like Steven
age are people who’ve never been anywhere else,’ said Ethan.

  ‘I’ve been to the same places as you.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. And you’ve barely read a book in your life. Your idea of culture is ten-pin bowling.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with liking Stevenage?’

  ‘See? Ignorant.’

  I looked across at Mum for support, hoping she’d take my side, but it looked like she hadn’t even heard. Her expression reminded me of the thing you see in cartoons when people’s eyeballs turn into dollar signs.

  ‘So we’re moving?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes!’ said Mum. ‘As soon as we can! To a place I’ve been dreaming of all my life. There are beautiful Victorian houses, and it’s in London but it’s near an enormous park, and even though it’s expensive, it’s filled with artists and musicians and publishers and creative people. It’s called …’ her voice dipped to a reverential whisper ‘… Hampstead.’

  ‘That’s where we’re going to live?’ said Ethan.

  ‘Yes, and there’s an amazing school where the artists and musicians and publishers send their children. It’s called the North London Academy for the Gifted and Talented. I’ve been in touch already, and we have places for all three of you. Freya, you’ll be able to do as much painting as you like, taught by real artists. Ethan, you’ll be able to concentrate on your music and maybe start a band. And Sam, you’ll … er … you’ll have a lovely time and meet lots of interesting new friends.’

  ‘I don’t want new friends. I like the friends I’ve got,’ I said.

  ‘Your friends are very nice, I know, but there’s a much more exciting world out there. You’re going to love it.’

  ‘Are you saying my friends are boring?’

  ‘No! They’re sweet kids.’

  ‘Sweet kids!? I’m fifteen, not five!’

  ‘I’m talking about being stuck here, in Stevenage! It’s this town that’s boring! London’s a global metropolis. The whole world is there. It’s going to be fantastic!’

  ‘You always say it’s noisy and polluted.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes! And dirty and crowded.’

  ‘Well, we’ll get used to that. Once you’re a proper Londoner you hardly notice those things.’

  ‘And what is an academy for the gifted and talented, anyway? Why can’t we just go to a normal school?’

  ‘I’ll show you the website. It’s a holistic educational environment that fosters creativity and engagement with the performing arts.’

  ‘Sounds like a nightmare,’ I said.

  Mum reached across the table, took my hand and stared into my eyes. ‘Open your mind, Sam. Mainstream education is restrictive and conformist and obsessed with pointless targets and tests. This is an amazing opportunity to break free of all that nonsense and have your true self fostered and nourished! Even if you don’t take to it straight away, in time you’re going to find new depths you never realised you had.’

  ‘I don’t want to find new depths. I like the ones I’ve got already.’

  ‘Those aren’t depths,’ said Ethan. ‘They’re shallows.’

  ‘Wearing black, watching boring films and playing the guitar doesn’t make you deep, Ethan.’

  ‘Actually, it does,’ he replied.

  I rolled my eyes at him, while privately wondering if he might in fact be right.

  ‘Is this really, definitely happening?’ he said to Dad, sounding more excited than I had ever heard him.

  ‘Yes,’ Dad replied.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Ethan’s face broke into an enormous grin. He leaned back in his chair, let out a long, ecstatic sigh and said, ‘I can’t believe it! This is like getting out of jail halfway through your sentence.’

  ‘If it’s a school for the gifted and talented,’ I said, ‘shouldn’t there be some kind of test to check that you actually are? Because I’m not.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Mum. ‘You just haven’t quite hit your stride.’

  ‘We made a donation,’ said Dad.

  ‘How do you know everyone else didn’t make a donation?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be so cynical,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve been watching for years how you kids are over-tested and crushed with stress and how uncreative the whole system is, and I’ve got you out. This is going to set you free to find out who you really are! I don’t want you to just be moulded into three more cogs in the capitalist machine. I want you to be unique and different and unafraid!’

  ‘WOO HOO!’ yelled Ethan. ‘Go, Mum!’

  ‘Dad’s a cog in the capitalist machine,’ I said. ‘He seems to quite like it. So are you.’

  ‘Not any more!’ she said. ‘I never have to look at another spreadsheet again! That job’s been eating me alive, but now I’ll be free to concentrate on being there for the three of you.’

  ‘Being where?’ said Ethan.

  ‘Wherever you need me.’

  ‘Everyone’s going to be so much happier,’ said Dad.

  I was unconvinced that increased parental surveillance was necessarily such good news. Judging by the look on Ethan’s face, so was he.

  ‘And while you’re at school, I’ll have time to pursue my own interests,’ said Mum. ‘I’m going to buy a kiln and take up pottery!’

  Nobody had an answer to this.

  ‘It’s going to be great,’ said Dad. ‘Not the pottery – the whole thing. But also the pottery. That’ll be excellent. Home-made pots! Wow!’

  Freya held up a drawing of a puppy, a unicorn and a kitten sitting on a cloud under a double rainbow. ‘Is this what Hampstead looks like?’ she asked.

  ‘Kind of,’ said Dad.

  ‘Can I go now? Have we finished?’ said Ethan, typing something into his phone as he walked out of the room.

  Lost in a dream about our new life, Mum stared through the window towards where the horizon would have been if Stevenage had one.

  ‘Dad? Do we really have to move?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve worked for this all my life,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be so much better from now on.’

  ‘But all my friends are here. Why do we have to go to London?’

  ‘Because we can. London’s an amazing city. Whatever it is you’re interested in – anything from anywhere in the world – it’s there.’

  ‘What I’m interested in is Stevenage.’

  ‘Why are you being so negative?’

  ‘Why are you sending me to a school for weirdos?’

  ‘It’s not a school for weirdos. It’s somewhere we think you’ll all be happy. We’re trying to protect you. I’ve made some real money for the first time in my life, and this is what money’s for, more than anything else. To protect your children.’

  ‘From what? Reality?’

  ‘I’ll show you the school website. It looks amazing.’

  ‘For Freya and Ethan.’

  ‘For all of you! You’re going to like it.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Yes! You’ll be fine. Once you get used to it.’

  This was deeply unconvincing.

  ‘We’re going to be so happy!’ said Mum, seeming to snap out of her daydream, but the look in her eye was far, far away, as if our cramped kitchen, our thin-walled house and the whole town we were living in had already ceased to exist.

  Goodbye, Stevenage!

  Mum spent the next few weeks driving to and from the dump as if gripped by an extended back-to-front version of a manic shopping spree. Going out and buying loads of stuff would have been the obvious reaction to our family windfall, but true to Mum’s habit of always doing what you least expect, she chose to celebrate getting rich by throwing away everything she could get her hands on. It was like getting burgled in slow motion.

  As our house gradually emptied, Ethan, Freya and I twigged that the only way to hang on to any possessions was to hide them.

  By the day the removal van came, we had hardly any furniture and had to watch TV standing up. We only still had the TV because as she was setting off for a charity shop I’d blocked the door and refused to move, while she gave a long speech that included lots of words like ‘capitalist’, ‘brain rot’, ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity’. I counter-attacked with an even longer and more impassioned speech, making heavy use of ‘stealing from your own child’, ‘video games as a vibrant art form’ and ‘help with my anxiety about moving house’. It was the last one that swung it. Naked emotional blackmail laced with mental-health buzzwords was always the best way to get Mum onside.